I grab my phone to play some music, hoping it’ll cure my melancholy dip in mood. Skyler James is a perfect choice. May’s a much bigger fan than I am—she was obsessed with Boys Will Be Boys when she was little—but there probably isn’t a gay man on the planet who doesn’t at least appreciate Skyler now. He’s not exactly my type, but there’s no denying the guy is gorgeous. I still can’t believe he came out, or that all those theories about him and his ex-bandmate were actually true.

Score one for the gays! Or two, really, because Trevor Blue is also smoking hot.

After I finish going over some last details for the event, I remember I’m supposed to cover the desk for Danny’s break. And then I’d like to pop into the kitchen to see how things are going today.

Travis already fixed the oven—it turned out not to be as broken as Addison thought. This saved me an unnecessary bill but agitated my chef. I get the sense she doesn’t appreciate someone else showing her up in her own kitchen. I can’t hold it against her for not figuring out what was wrong with it though. From what I learned when interviewing her, she owned a successful restaurant in Chicago for five years with her now ex-wife. But her role was mainly to handle the cooking while her ex took care of the business side of things, and that probably included dealing with appliance maintenance.

It's obvious Addison’s grateful for Travis’s help with the food prep, though. Now that she’s less stressed, she’s been excited to come up with even more new menu options for the corporate crowd. Lately, there’s been a lot of food shoved in my face for me try, and you’ll never find me complaining about that.

As I get up, my phone rings. Seeing Elise’s name on the screen, I sink back into my chair and take a deep breath. She never calls this often.

“Hi, Elise,” I answer faux cheerfully.

“Brenden!” she says by way of greeting. “I’m so glad to catch you again. We didn’t get a chance to talk much the other day.”

That’s because you only really wanted to talk to May, I think a little bitterly.

We do the obligatory small talk thing for a minute. I ask how she and Grant are doing in Philly and how Grant’s work is going before I’m tapped out. It’s harder when we’ve already talked about May recently. She’s our only common interest.

Then Elise asks me how things are going with the inn. And it may just be out of politeness, since I asked about her husband’s work, but my hackles go up.